Alfred H. Stone Collection
Volume: 71

28. Address of the Free Constitutionalists to the People of the United States (Boston: Thayer & Eldridge, 1860). (54 p.)

Criticism of the Republicans for their refusal to interfere with slavery where it already exists. “Those Republican politicians, who, instead of insisting upon the liberation of the slaves, maintain, under the name of State Rights, the inviolability of the slaveholder’s right of property in his slaves, in the States, and yet claim to be friends of liberty, because they cry, “Keep the slaves where they are;” “No removal of them into the Territories;” “Bring them not into our neighborhood,”—are either smitten with stupidity, as with a disease, or, what is more probable, are nothing else than selfish, cowardly, hypocritical, and unprincipled men, who, for the sake of gaining or retaining power, are simply making a useless noise about nothing, with the purpose of diverting men’s minds from the true issue, and of thus postponing the inevitable contest, which every honest and braced man ought to be ready and eager to meet at once” (emphasis in original).